Monday, 25 May 2015

In the centre of the
portrait-format sheet, a tree-man rises above a river. His egg-shaped body,
covered in part with bark and/or feathers, supports itself on two crooked,
partly hollow tree trunks that at the same time resemble arms, and which are
standing in boats as if they were shoes. His head, which is turned back over
one shoulder towards the viewer, is crowned by a flat disc carrying an enormous
jug. They include at least two men and a woman, and one or two other people. A
flag with a crescent moon flies from a long slanting pole, recalling an inn
sign. Higher up, an owl perches in the leafless crown of the tree that rises
skywards from the giant's left foot. The plants motifs in the drawing can be
summed up in terms of 'flourishing/living' versus 'dying'. Near a tall, slender
tree in the lower left corner a deer is poised on the sloping bank, opposite a
stork standing on one leg on the right. Birds are flying around the middle
ground and mobbing an owl on the right. In the background, beneath banks of
clouds, a harbour with a large number of boats extends along the irregular
shoreline, and several villages or small towns are clustered around church
spires.

The philosophical tree–man
+ the 3 graces here and now, in the terrestrial world, connecting the 'higher
place' (heaven) and the 'low places' (the underworld). A symbol of the
reconciliation from contradistinctions.

Tuesday, 19 May 2015

Paul Cézanne was one of the most innovative
artists I have ever seen. His own unique style emerged from impressionism, his
sensitive touch and beautiful color palette are of a rare quality.

My admiration started at an early age, since the
first time I saw his painting 'Mont
Sainte-Victoire', ca 1905. This painting had a big impression on me,
this was partly because of the amazing colors, but mostly it was the
abstraction of the landscape, this was beyond my imagination at that time.The mountain on this painting will
become his inspiration and obsession and ultimately his death.

Cézanne painted this when he was 66 years old
and he died a year later. He was caught in a storm while he was painting on
this mountain. Because of his obsession with paining and this mountain he
stayed there to finish the painting, after two hours he decided to go home. On
his way back he collapsed and was found hours later, he suffered from
hypothermia. The next day he wanted to go back to finish his painting, but half
way up the mountain he lost his consciousness. They brought him back to his bed
and he never left that bed again. He died a couple of days later.

With the story of his death in the back of my
head, it seems to me that Cézanne already painted the storm that would kill him
a year later. The dark sky that slowly tries to take over the landscape and
wants to swallow the painting. But still there are some sunbeams that cut
through the dark sky as if they try to say that there is still a strong force
that will try to beat this heavy storm. Unfortunately we know that that force
wasn't strong enough.

Years later, when I became a student at the art
academy I realized that my own obsession with

abstract art started with this painting by
Cézanne. Of course this is still more or less a figurative

painting, but it's far off from being a
realistic view of the mountain. Later, after painting merely

pure abstract paintings, I started to
incorporate figurative representations of things drawn from the

real world, things like tape and bubble-wrap, in
order to make abstract paintings that play with the

associative character of the human brain. This
is actually the mirror image of what Cézanne did

when he incorporated abstraction in his
paintings, trying to come closer to the expreience of what you

see rather than being just another
representation of what already exists.

Maarten
van Soest, 2015

'I
wished to copy nature. I could not. But I was satisfied when I discovered the
sun, for instance, could not be reproduced, but only represented by something
else'.

ABOUT THIS BLOG

A blog where invited artists show that they stand in a tradition by expressing their commitment to an inspiring, no longer living predecessor. Nothing But Good Should Be Said Of The Dead.
A blog by Michael de Kok, René Korten and Reinoud van Vught.